I. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516-1547), and the Minor Elizabethan Cycles

T

HE first sonnets in English are to be found in Tottel's Miscellany or Book of Songs and Sonettes, which was published in 1557. The volume consists mainly of the poetical writings of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who, with Chaucer, may be considered to have laid the technical foundations of modern English poetry. Besides being a poet, Wyatt was a scholar and a courtier. He has been described as "one of the most accomplished men of his day . . . dextrous and subtle in the management of affairs yet of spotless honour and integrity." Surrey, for his part, though equally accomplished, and a distinguished soldier, lay some time in the Fleet prison "for challenging a gentleman," and later was committed " for roystering and breaking windows in the streets at night." that the sonnet began well. Both Wyatt and Surrey had resided in Italy, both were admirers of Petrarc and the Italianate literature, and conjointly they transplanted the sonnet form into the poetic of their own country. The credit of having written the first English sonnet is ascribed by some authorities to Wyatt and by others to Surrey. We are

66

So

inclined to agree with Leigh Hunt that Wyatt probably wrote the first English poem constructed on the Petrarcan principle. It is a fairly crude piece of work, and we reproduce it because of its formal interest rather than its poetical value. We have Bowdlerized it to the extent of altering one word:

Cesar, when that the traytor of Egipt,
With thonorable hed did him present,
Covering his gladnesse, did represent

Playnt with his teres onteward, as it is writt;
And Hannyball, eke, when fortune him [spit]
Clene from his reign, and from all his intent
Laught to his folke, whom sorrowe did torment,
His cruel dispite for to dis-gorge and quit.
So chaunceth it oft, that every passion
The mind hideth, by color contrary,
With fayned visage now sad, now mery:
Whereby if I laught, any time or season,
It is for bicause I have nother way

To cloke my care, but under sport and play.

It is to be noted that Wyatt opens the ball with a proper Petrarcan octet followed by a sinful close rhyme and rhymed couplet. In other respects the sonnet rule is observed. A better sonnet of Wyatt's, both as poetry and technically, is the following:

The longe love, that in my thought I harber
And in my heart doth keep his residence,
Into my face preaseth with bold pretence,
And therein campeth, spreding his banner.
She that me learneth to love and to suffer,
And willes that my trust, and lustes negligence
Be reined by reason, shame and reverence,
With his hardinesse taketh displeasure.
Where with all unto the heart's forest he fleeth,
Leaving his enterprise with paine and crye,
And there him hideth and not appeareth,
What may I do when my master feareth,
But in the field with him to live and die?
For good is the life, ending faithfully.

Here again we have the proper sonnet structure, and the due observance of the volta or turn, but the sestet concludes with two rhymed couplets.

The sonnets of Surrey are much more competent, and incomparably finer in the poetical sense. Here, however, great liberties are taken with the Petrarcan scheme, and while in some cases a pretty poem results, it has no claim to consideration as a sonnet except in respect of the number of its lines. The example we quote is the familiar Description of Spring, wherein each thing renews save only the Lover:

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale;
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs;
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes flete with new repaired scale;
The adder all her slough away she flings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings;
Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
And thus I see, among these pleasant things,
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs!

This sonnet is rhymed throughout on two sounds, and the sweetness of the melodic result cannot be gainsaid. But it is obvious that a number of pieces so rhymed would be cloying to the ear.

Tottell's Miscellany had a great vogue and went through seven editions between 1557 and 1584. It started a new fashion in English poetry and gave an entirely new turn to poetical craftmanship. Following the later editions came a steady stream of sonnet cycles or sequences including those of Sidney,

Spenser, and Shakespeare, and various lesser per formers whom we may notice briefly. In 1851 was published the 'Eкатоμтaliα, or Passionate Century of Love, by Thomas Watson, whom Steevens pronounced to be a more elegant sonneteer than Shakespeare. The appended effusion of Watson, from a later work, The Teares of Fancie, provides a sufficient commentary on Steeven's judgment. It is as good as anything Watson wrote, and as full of teares." Except for the fact that it is on the pure English model, we fail to see how it can be compared with Shakespeare at all.

66

I saw the object of my pining thought,
Within a garden of sweet nature's placing :
Where is an arbour artificial wrought,

By workman's wondrous skill the garden gracing
Did boast his glory, glory far renowned,
For on his shady boughs my mistress slept,
And with a garland of his branches crowned,
Her dainty forehead from the sun y kept.
Imperious love upon her eyelids tending,
Playing his wanton sports at every beck,
And into every finest limb descending,
From eyes to lips, from lips to ivory neck :
And every limb supplied and 't every part,
Had free access,
but durst not touch her heart.

The whole of the sonnets in the Passionate Century are eighteen lines in length. Each of them is really a translation of some other author, and preceded by an ingenuous admission of the source from which it is borrowed. Strictly, of course, the verses are not

sonnets.

A year after the publication of Astrophel and Stella, that is to say, in 1591, Samuel Daniel issued

his famous Delia, a sonnet-sequence of fifty-four pieces, of which we reproduce two :

Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair;

Her brow shades frown, altho' her eyes are sunny;
Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despair;
And her disdains are gall, her favours honey.
A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour,
Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love;
The wonder of all eyes that look upon her :
Sacred on earth; design'd a saint above;
Chastity and Beauty, which are deadly foes,
Live reconciled friends within her brow;
And had she Pity to conjoin with those,
Then who had heard the plaints I utter now?
For had she not been fair, and thus unkind,
My muse had slept, and none had known my mind.

I must not grieve, my love, whose eyes would read
Lines of delight, whereon her youth might smile;
Flowers have time before they come to seed,
And she is young, and now must sport the while.
And sport, sweet maid, in season of these years,
And learn to gather flowers before they wither;
And where the sweetest blossom first appears,
Let love and youth conduct thy pleasures thither,
Lighten forth smiles to clear the clouded air,
And calm the tempest which my sighs do raise :
Pity and smiles do best become the fair;
Iity and smiles must only yield thee praise.
Make me to say, when all my griefs are gone,
Happy the heart that sigh'd for such a one.

The octet of the first of the foregoing is in rhymed couplets as regards the six opening lines; but the sestet is on a sound Petrarcan model. The second sonnet is on the pure English model with the pause in the proper place.

In 1593 Thomas Lodge published Phillis Honoured with Pastoral Sonnets and Giles Fletcher his Licia, or Poems of Love in Honour of the admirable